Phredde and the Vampire Footy Team by Jackie French

Author:Jackie French [Jackie French]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780730491286
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

Chapter 15

Feeding with a Vampire

My vampire was called Shaun. The vampire I was supposed to billet, I mean. I don’t mean HE was mine…Well, maybe I did hope Bruce might get jealous, but he and Zac were still down at the hippo pond when Phredde’s mum picked us up, so he didn’t even see that I took a bloke home.

There was something ODD about Shaun too. Not his fangs of course—I’d gotten used to them already. Just…

‘Golly gosh! Sumptuous11’. Shaun’s eyes were wide as he stared at our drawbridge. ‘It is surely the most splendiferous castle I have ever cast my eyes upon! Indeed, in addition, it is the first time I have ridden upon a carpet,’ he added, staring down at the piranhas. ‘Golly gosh, those wee small fish look famished!’

‘They’re my pet piranhas,’ I told him. I was a bit relieved Cuddles wasn’t about. People sometimes get the wrong idea about Cuddles until they get to know her. She isn’t really trying to eat them when she chews their feet. She just likes the taste of boots.

Mum was in the Smaller Ballroom cum TV room. She didn’t even look up as we came in. ‘What’s a nine-letter word meaning giant pimple?’

‘Carbuncle,’ offered Shaun, before I could get a word in edgewise.

Mum looked up. She stared at the fangs, the black silk cloak and the red eyes behind the sunglasses, then said carefully, ‘How very nice to meet you.’

‘It’s cool, Mum,’ I said. ‘Yes, he’s a vampire and no, he doesn’t have an arrangement with the abattoir like Mrs Olsen does, and yes, he does hunt his prey live, but it’s only mosquitoes. Phredde’s mum PING!ed his coffin into the Horribly Pink spare bedroom so you don’t have to worry about clean sheets. Is it okay if we watch TV before dinner?’

I could see Mum trying to work all this out. The thought processes of grown-ups slow down after they turn twenty-one. I just turned the TV on anyway. Shaun and I flopped down on the bean bags while Gark brought in some iced watermelon, frozen bananas with chocolate and nut topping and frozen oranges cut in half so we could eat them with a spoon.

And then it struck me.

‘Hey,’ I said to Shaun. ‘You can’t eat any of this, can you?’

I hadn’t even thought about what he ate when I thought he was a blood-crazed predator. Well, I suppose I HAD given it a thought—I’d thought he might try to eat me. But it had never occurred to me till now he couldn’t eat chilled watermelon.

A life without chilled watermelon! It didn’t bear thinking about!

But Shaun just shook his head. ‘There is no requirement for concern,’ he said. ‘Indeed, that is why we dine upon live prey! If a vampire becomes accustomed to dead blood from the abattoir that is all they are able to digest. But those of us who ingest live prey like mosquitoes and moths can thus consume anything for which we have an inclination! Golly gosh,’ he added.

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